The abbey prison was two little cells attached to the rear of the gatehouse, very clean, furnished with benchbeds no worse than the novices endured, and very rarely occupied. The summer period of Saint Peter’s fair was the chief populator of the cells, since it could be relied upon to provide two happy drunken servants or lay brothers nightly, who slept off their excesses and accepted their modest fines and penances without rancour, thinking the game well worth the candle. From time to time some more serious disturbance might cast up an inmate, some ill-balanced brother who nursed a cloistered hate long enough to attempt violence, or a lay servant who stole, or a novice who offended too grossly against the imposed code. The abbey court was not a busy one.
In one of the two cells Brother Cadfael and Edwy sat side by side, warmly and companionably. There was a grille in the door, but it was most improbable that anyone was paying attention to anything that could be heard through it. The brother who held the keys was sleepy, and in any case indifferent to the cause that had brought him a prisoner. The difficulty would probably be to batter loudly enough to wake him when Cadfael wanted to leave.
“It wasn’t so hard,” said Edwy, sitting back with a grateful sigh after demolishing the bowl of porridge a tolerant cook had provided him, “there’s a cousin of father’s lives along the riverside, just beyond your property of the Gaye, he has an orchard there, and a shed for the donkey and cart, big enough to hide Rufus. His boy brought word into the town to us, and I took father’s horse and came out to meet Edwin there. Nobody was looking for a bony old piebald like our Japhet, I never got a second glance as I crossed the bridge, and I didn’t hurry. Alys came with me pillion, and kept watch in case they got close. Then we changed clothes and horses, and Edwin made off towards—”
“Don’t tell me!” said Cadfael quickly.
“No, you can truly say you don’t know. Plainly not the way I went. They were slow sighting me,” said Edwy scornfully, “even with Alys helping them. But once they had me in view it was a matter of how long I could keep them busy, to give him time to get well away. I could have taken them still further, but Rufus was tiring, so I let them have me. I had to, in the end, it kept them happy several more hours, and they sent one man ahead to call off the hunt. Edwin’s had a clear run. Now what do you think they’ll do with me?”
“If you hadn’t already been in abbey charge, and the prior by, at that,” said Cadfael frankly, “they’d have had the hide off you for leading them such a dance and making such fools of them. I wouldn’t say Prior Robert himself wouldn’t have liked to do as much, but dignity forbids, and authority forbids letting the secular arm skin you on his behalf. Though I fancy,” he said with sympathy, viewing the blue bruises that were beginning to show on Edwy’s jaw and cheekbone, “they’ve already paid you part of your dues.”
The boy shrugged disdainfully. “I can’t complain. And it wasn’t all one way. You should have seen the sergeant flop belly-down into the bog... and heard him when he got up. It was good sport, and we got Edwin away. And I’ve never had such a horse under me before, it was well worth it. But now what’s to happen? They can’t accuse me of murder, or of stealing Rufus, or even the gown, because I was never near the barn this morning, and there are plenty of witnesses to where I was, about the shop and the yard.”
“I doubt if you’ve broken any law,” agreed Cadfael, “but you have made the law look very foolish, and no man in authority and office enjoys that. They could well keep you in close hold in the castle for a while, for helping a wanted man to escape. They may even threaten you in the hope of fetching Edwin back to get you out of trouble.”
Edwy shook his head vigorously. “He need take no notice of that, he knows in the end there’s nothing criminal they can lay against me. And I can sit out threats better than he. He loses his temper. He’s getting better, but he has far to go yet.” Was he as buoyant about his prospects as he made out? Cadfael could not be quite sure, but certainly this elder of the pair had turned his four months seniority into a solid advantage, perhaps by reason of feeling responsible for his improbable uncle from the cradle. “I can keep my mouth shut and wait,” said Edwy serenely.
“Well, since Prior Robert has so firmly demanded that the sheriff come in person tomorrow to remove you,” sighed Cadfael, “I will at least make sure of being present, and try what can be got for you. The prior has given me a spiritual charge, and I’ll stand fast on it. And now you’d better get your rest. I am supposed to be here to exhort you to an amended life, but to tell the truth, boy, I find your life no more in need of amendment than mine, and I think it would be presumption in me to meddle. But if you’ll join your voice to mine in the night prayers, I think God may be listening.”
“Willingly,” said Edwy blithely, and plumped to his knees like a cheerful child, with reverently folded hands and closed eyes. In the middle of the prayers before sleeping his lips fluttered in a brief smile; perhaps he was remembering the extremely secular language of the sergeant rising dripping from the bog.
*
Cadfael was up before Prime, alert in case the prisoner’s escort should come early. Prior Robert had been extremely angry at last night’s comedy, but grasped readily at the plain fact that it gave him full justification for demanding that the sheriff should at once relieve him of an offender who had turned out to be no concern of his at all. This was not the boy who had taken away a Benedictine habit and a horse in Benedictine care, he was merely the mischievous brat who had worn the one and ridden the other to the ludicrous discomfiture of several gullible law officers. They could have him, and welcome; but the prior considered that it was due to his dignity—in this mood fully abbatial—that the senior officer then in charge, sheriff or deputy, should come in person to make amends for the inconvenience to which the abbey had been subjected, and remove the troublesome element. Robert wanted a public demonstration that henceforth all responsibility lay with the secular arm, and none within his sacred walls.
Brother Mark hovered close at Cadfael’s elbow as the escort rode in, about half past eight in the morning, before the second Mass. Four mounted men-at-arms, and a spruce, dark, lightly built young nobleman on a tall, gaunt and self-willed horse, dappled from cream to almost black. Mark heard Brother Cadfael heave a great, grateful sigh at the sight of him, and felt his own heart rise hopefully at the omen.
“The sheriff must have gone south to keep the feast with the king,” said Cadfael with immense satisfaction. “God is looking our way at last. That is not Gilbert Prestcote, but his deputy, Hugh Beringar of Maesbury.”
*
“Now,” said Beringar briskly, a quarter of an hour later, “I have placated the prior, promised him deliverance from the presence of this desperate bravo, sent him off to Mass and chapter in tolerable content, and retrieved you, my friend, from having to accompany him, on the grounds that you have questions to answer.” He closed the door of the room in the gatehouse from which all his men-at-arms had been dismissed to wait his pleasure, and came and sat down opposite Cadfael at the table. “And so you have, though not, quite as he supposes. So now, before we go and pick this small crab out of his shell, tell me everything you know about this curious business. I know you must know more of it than any other man, however confidently my sergeant sets out his case. Such a break in the monastic monotony could never occur, and you not get wind of it and be there in the thick of it. Tell me everything.”
And now that it was Beringar in the seat of authority, while Prestcote attended dutifully at his sovereign lord’s festal table, Cadfael saw no reason for reserve, at least so far as his own part was concerned. And all, or virtually all, was what he told.
“He came to you, and you hid him,” mused Beringar.
“I did. So I would again, in the same circumstances.”
“Cadfael, you must know as well as I the strength of the case against this boy. Who else has anything to gain? Yet I know you, and where you have doubts, I shall certainly not be without them.”
“I have no doubts,” said Cadfael firmly. “The boy is innocent even of the thought of murder. And poison is so far out of his scope, he never would or could conceive the idea. I tested them both, when they came, and they neither of them even knew how the man had died, they believed me when I said he had been cut down in his blood. I stuck the means of murder under the child’s nose, and he never paled. All it meant to him was a mild memory of sniffing the same sharp smell while Brother Rhys was having his shoulders rubbed in the infirmary.”
“I take your word for all that,” said Beringar, “and it is good evidence, but it is not in itself proof. How if we should both of us underestimate the cunning of the young, simply because they are young?”
“True,” agreed Cadfael with a wry grin, “you are none so old yourself, and of your cunning, as I know, the limit has not yet been found. But trust me, these two are not of the same make as you. I have known them, you have not; agreed? I have my duty to do, according to such lights as I see. So have you your duty to do, according to your office and commission. I don’t quarrel with that. But at this moment, Hugh, I don’t know and have no means of guessing where Edwin Gurney is, or I might well urge him to give himself up to you and rely on your integrity. You will not need me to tell you that this loyal nephew of his, who has taken some sharp knocks for him, does know where he is, or at least knows where he set out to go. You may ask him, but of course he won’t tell you. Neither for your style of questioning nor Prestcote’s.”
Hugh drummed his fingers on the table, and pondered in silence for a moment. “Cadfael, I must tell you I shall pursue the hunt for the boy to the limit, and not spare any tricks in the doing, so look to your own movements.”
“That’s fair dealing,” said Cadfael simply. “You and I have been rivals in trickery before, and ended as allies. But as for my movements, you’ll find them monstrously dull. Did Prior Robert not tell you? I’m confined within the abbey walls, I may not go beyond.”
Hugh’s agile black brows shot up to meet his hair. “Good God, for what cloistered crime?” His eyes danced. “What have you been about, to incur such a ban?”
“I spent too long in talk with the widow, and a stretched ear gathered that we had known each other very well, years ago, when we were young.” That was one thing he had not thought necessary to tell, but there was no reason to withhold it from Hugh. “You asked me, once, how it came I had never married, and I told you I once had some idea of the kind, before I went to the Holy Land.”
“I do remember! You even mentioned a name. By now, you said, she must have children and grandchildren... Is it really so, Cadfael? This lady is your Richildis?”
“This lady,” said Cadfael with emphasis, “is indeed Richildis, but mine she is not. Two husbands ago I had a passing claim on her, and that’s all.”
“I must see her! The charmer who caught your eye must be worth cultivating. If you were any other man I should say this greatly weakens the force of your championship of her son, but knowing you, I think any scamp of his age in trouble would have you by the nose. I will see her, however, she may need advice or help, for it seems there’s a legal tangle there that will take some unravelling.”
“There’s another thing you can do, that may help to prove to you what I can only urge. I told you the boy says he threw into the river an inlaid wooden box, quite small.” Cadfael described it minutely. “If that could come to light, it would greatly strengthen his story, which I, for one, believe. I cannot go out and contact the fishermen and watermen of Severn, and ask them to keep watch for such a small thing in the places they’ll know of, where things afloat do wash up. But you can, Hugh. You can have it announced in Shrewsbury and downstream. It’s worth the attempt.”
“That I’ll certainly do,” said Beringar readily. “There’s a man whose grim business it is, when some poor soul drowns in Severn, to know exactly where the body will come ashore. Whether small things follow the same eddies is more than I know, but he’ll know. I’ll have him take this hunt in charge. And now, if we’ve said all, we’d better go and see this twin imp of yours. Lucky for him you knew him, they’d hardly have believed it if he’d told them himself that he was the wrong boy. Are they really so like?”
“No, no more than a general family look about them if you know them, or see them side by side. But apart, a man might be in doubt, unless he did know them well. And your men were after the rider of that horse, and sure who it must be. Come and see!”
He was still in doubt, as they went together to the cell where Edwy waited, by this time in some trepidation, exactly what Beringar meant to do with his prisoner, though he had no fear that any harm would come to the boy. Whatever Hugh might think about Edwin’s guilt or innocence, he was not the man to lean too heavily upon Edwy’s staunch solidarity with his kinsman.
“Come forth, Edwy, into the daylight,” said Beringar, holding the cell door wide, “and let me look at you. I want to be in no doubt which of you I have on my hands, the next time you change places.” And when Edwy obediently rose and stepped warily out into the court, after one nervous side-glance to make sure Brother Cadfael was there, the deputy sheriff took him by the chin and raised his face gently enough, and studied it attentively. The bruises were purple this morning, but the hazel eyes were bright. “I’ll know you again,” said Hugh confidently. “Now, young sir! You have cost us a great deal of time and trouble, but I don’t propose to waste even more by taking it out of your skin. I’ll ask you but once: Where is Edwin Gurney?”
The phrasing of the question and the cut of the dark face left in doubt what was to happen if he got no answer; in spite of the mild tone, the potentialities were infinite. Edwy moistened dry lips, and said in the most conciliatory and respectful tone Cadfael had heard from him: “Sir, Edwin is my kin and my friend, and if I had been willing to tell where he is, I should not have gone to such pains to help him get there. I think you must see that I can’t and won’t betray him.”
Beringar looked at Brother Cadfael, and kept his face grave but for the sparkle in his eye. “Well, Edwy, I expected no other, to tell the truth. Nobody does ill to keep faith. But I want you where I may lay hand on you whenever I need to, and be sure you are not stravaiging off on another wild rescue.”
Edwy foresaw a cell in Shrewsbury castle, and stiffened a stoical face to meet the worst.
“Give me your parole not to leave your father’s house and shop,” said Beringar, “until I give you your freedom, and you may go home. Why should we feed you at public expense over the Christmas feast, when I fancy your word, once given, will be your bond? What do you say?”
“Oh, I do give you my word!” gasped Edwy, startled and radiant with relief. “I won’t leave the yard until you give me leave. And I thank you!”
“Good! And I take your word, as you may take mine. My task, Edwy, is not to convict your uncle, or any man, of murder at all costs, it is to discover truly who did commit murder, and that I mean to do. Now come, I’ll take you home myself, a word with your parents may not come amiss.”
*
They were gone before High Mass at ten, Beringar with Edwy pillion behind him, the raw-boned dapple being capable of carrying double his master’s light weight, the men-at-arms of the escort two by two behind. Only in the middle of Mass, when his mind should have been on higher things, did Cadfael recall vexedly two more concessions he might have gained if he had thought of them in time. Martin Bellecote, for certain, was now without a horse, and the abbey was willing to part with Rufus, while Richildis would surely be glad to have him settled with her son-in-law, and no longer be beholden to the abbey for his keep. It would probably have tickled Beringar’s humour to restore the carpenter a horse, on the pretext of relieving the abbey of an incubus. But the other thing was more important. He had meant to go searching the shores of the pond for the poison vial the previous day, and instead had found himself confined within the walls. Why had he not remembered to ask Beringar to follow up that tenuous but important line of inquiry, while he was asking him to have the watermen watch for the pear-wood reliquary? Now it was too late, and he could not follow Beringar into the town to remedy the omission. Vexed with himself, he even snapped at Brother Mark, when that devoted young man questioned him about the outcome of the morning’s events. Undeterred, Mark followed him, after dinner, to his sanctuary in the garden.
“I am an old fool,” said Cadfael, emerging from his depression, “and have lost a fine chance of getting my work done for me, in places where I can no longer go myself. But that’s no fault of yours, and I’m sorry I took it out on you.”
“If it’s something you want done outside the walls,” said Mark reasonably, “why should I be of less use today than I was yesterday?”
“True, but I’ve involved you enough already. And if I had had good sense I could have got the law to do it, which would have been far better. Though this is not at all dangerous or blameworthy,” he reminded himself, taking heart, “it is only to search once again for a bottle...”
“Last time,” said Mark thoughtfully, “we were looking for something we hoped would not be a bottle. Pity we did not find it.”
“True, but this time it should be a bottle, if the omen of Beringar’s coming instead of Prestcote means anything. And I’ll tell you where.” And so he did, pointing the significance of a window open to the south, even in light frost, on a bright day.
“I’m gone,” said Brother Mark. “And you may sleep the noon away with a good conscience. My eyes are younger than yours.”
“Mind, take a napkin, and if you find it, wrap it loosely, and touch only as you must. I need to see how the oil has run and dried.”
*
It was when the afternoon light was dimming that Brother Mark came back. There was half an hour yet before Vespers, but from this time on any search for a small thing in a narrow slope of grass would have been a blind and hopeless quest. Winter days begin so late and end so early, like the dwindling span of life past three score.
Cadfael had taken Brother Mark at his word, and dozed the afternoon away. There was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do here, no work needing his efforts. But suddenly he started out of a doze, and there was Brother Mark, a meagre but erect and austere figure, standing over him with a benign smile on the ageless, priestly face Cadfael had seen in him ever since his scared, resentful, childish entry within these walls. The voice, soft, significant, delighted, rolled the years back; he was still eighteen, and a young eighteen at that.
“Wake up! I have something for you!”
Like a child coming on a father’s birthday: “Look! I made it for you myself!”
The carefully folded white napkin was lowered gently into Cadfael’s lap. Brother Mark delicately turned back the folds, and exposed the contents with a gesture of such shy triumph that the analogy was complete. There it lay to be seen, a small, slightly misshapen vial of greenish glass, coloured somewhat differently all down one side, where yellowish brown coated the green, from a residue of liquid that still moved very sluggishly within.
“Light me that lamp!” said Cadfael, gathering the napkin in both hands to raise the prize nearer his eyes. Brother Mark laboured industriously with flint and tinder, and struck a spark into the wick of the little oil-lamp in its clay saucer, but the conflict of light, within and without, hardly bettered the view. There was a stopper made of a small plug of wood wrapped in a twist of wool cloth. Cadfael sniffed eagerly at the cloth on the side that was coloured brown. The odour was there, faint but unmistakable, his nose knew it well. Frost had dulled but still retained it. There was a long trail of thin, crusted oil, long dried, down the outside of the vial.
“Is it right? Have I brought you what you wanted?” Brother Mark hovered, pleased and anxious.
“Lad, you have indeed! This little thing carried death in it, and, see, it can be hidden within a man’s hand. It lay thus, on its side, as you found it? Where the residue has gathered and dried the length of the vial within? And without, too... It was stoppered and thrust out of sight in haste, surely about someone’s person, and if he has not the mark of it somewhere about him still, this long ooze of oil from the leaking neck is a great deceiver. Now sit down here and tell me where and how you found it, for much depends on that. And can you find the exact spot again, without fail?”
“I can, for I marked it.” Flushed with pleasure at having pleased, Brother Mark sat down, leaning eagerly against Cadfael’s sleeve. “You know the houses there have a strip of garden going down almost to the water, there is only a narrow footpath along the edge of the pond below. I did not quite like to invent a reason for entering the gardens, and besides, they are narrow and steep. It would not be difficult to throw something of any weight from the house right to the edge of the water, and beyond—even for a woman, or a man in a hurry. So I went first along the path, the whole stretch of it that falls within reach from the kitchen window, the one you said was open that day. But it was not there I found it.”
“It was not?”
“No, but beyond. There’s a fringe of ice round the edge of the pond now, but the current from the millrace keeps all the middle clear. I found the bottle on my way back, after I’d searched all the grass and bushes there, and thought to look on the other side of the path, along the rim of the water. And it was there, on its side half under the ice, held fast. I’ve driven a hazel twig into the ground opposite the place, and the hole I prised it from will say unless we have a thaw. I think the bottle was thrown clear of whatever ice there may have been then, but not far enough out to be taken away by the mill current, and because the stopper was in it, it floated, and drifted back to be caught in the next frost. But, Cadfael, it couldn’t have been thrown from the kitchen window, it was too far along the path.”
“You’re sure of that? Then where? Is it the distance that seems too great?”
“No, but the direction. It’s much too far to the right, and there’s a bank of bushes between. The ground lies wrong for it. If a man threw it from the kitchen window it would not go where I found it, it could not. But from the window of the other room it very well could. Do you remember, Cadfael, was that window unshuttered, too? The room where they were dining?”
Cadfael thought back to the scene within the house, when Richildis met him and ushered him desperately through to the bedchamber, past the disordered table laid with three trenchers. “It was, it was!—the shutter was set open, for the midday sun came in there.” From that room Edwin had rushed in indignant offence, and out through the kitchen, where he was thought to have committed his crime and rid himself of the evidence later. But not for a moment had he been alone in that inner room; only in his precipitate flight had he been out of sight of all the household.
“You see, Mark, what this means? From what you say, this vial was either thrown from the window of the inner room, or else someone walked along that path and threw it into the pond. And neither of those things could Edwin have done. He might, as they suppose, have halted for a moment in the kitchen, but he certainly did not go along the path by the pond before making for the bridge, or Aelfric would have overtaken him. No, he would have been ahead of him, or met him at the gate! Nor did he have the opportunity, at any time afterwards, to dispose of the vial there. He hid with his bitter mood until Edwy found him, and from then on they were both in hiding until they came to me. This small thing, Mark, is proof that Edwin is as clear of guilt as you or I.”
“But it does not prove who the guilty man is,” said Mark.
“It does not. But if the bottle was indeed thrown from the window of that inner room, then it was done long after the death, for I doubt if anyone was alone in there for a moment until after the sergeant had come and gone. And if the one responsible carried this somewhere on him all that time, as ill-stoppered as it is now, then the marks of it will be on him. He might try to scrub the stain away, but it will not be easily removed. And who can afford to discard cotte or gown? No, the signs will be there to be found.”
“But what if it was someone else, not of the household, who did the deed, and flung the vial from the pathway? Once you did wonder, about the cook and the scullions...
“I won’t say it’s impossible. But is it likely? From the path a man could make very sure the vial went into the mid-current and the deep of the pool, and even if it did not sink—though he would have had time in that case to ensure that it did!—it would be carried away back to the brook and the river. But you see it fell short, and lay for us to find.”
“What must we do now?” asked Brother Mark, roused and ready.
“We must go to Vespers, my son, or we shall be late. And tomorrow we must get you, and this witness with you, to Hugh Beringar in Shrewsbury.”
The lay contingent at Vespers was always thin, but never quite absent. That evening Martin Bellecote had come down out of the town to give a word of hearty thanks first to God, and then to Cadfael, for his son’s safe return. After the service ended he waited in the cloister for the brothers to emerge, and came to meet Cadfael at the south door.
“Brother, it’s to you we owe it that the lad’s home again, if it is with a flea in his ear, and not lying in some den in the castle for his pains.”
“Not to me, for I could not free him. It was Hugh Beringar who saw fit to send him home. And take my word, in all that may happen you can rely on Beringar for a decent, fair-minded man who’ll not tolerate injustice. In any encounter with him, tell him the truth.”
Bellecote smiled, but wryly. “Truth, but not all the truth, even to him—though he showed generous indeed to my boy, I grant you. But until the other one’s as safe as Edwy, I keep my own counsel on where he is. But to you, brother...”
“No,” said Cadfael quickly, “not to me, either though soon, I hope, there may be no reason left for hiding him. But that time’s not yet. Is all well, then, with your own family? And Edwy none the worse?”
“Never a whit the worse. Without a bruise or two he’d have valued his adventure less. It was all his own devising. But it’s caused him to draw in his horns for a while. I never knew him so biddable before, and that’s no bad thing. He’s working with more zeal than he commonly shows. Not that we’re overburdened with work, this close to the feast, but wanting Edwin, and now Meurig’s gone to keep Christmas with his kin, I’ve enough on hand to keep my scamp busy.”
“So Meurig goes to his own people, does he?”
“Regularly for Christmas and Easter. He has cousins and an uncle or so up in the borders. He’ll be back before the year ends. He sets store by his own folk, does Meurig.”
Yes, so he had said on the day Cadfael first encountered him. “My kinship is my mother’s kinship, I go with my own. My father was not a Welshman.” Naturally he would want to go home for the feast.
“May we all be at peace for the Lord’s nativity!” said Cadfael, with heartier optimism since the discovery of the small witness now lying on a shelf in his workshop.
“Amen to that, brother! And I and my household thank you for your stout aid, and if ever you need ours, you have but to say.”
Martin Bellecote went back to his shop with duty done, and Brother Cadfael and Brother Mark went to supper with duty still to be done.
“I’ll go early into the town,” said Brother Mark, earnestly whispering in Cadfael’s ear in a corner of the chapter-house, during some very lame readings in the Latin by Brother Francis, after the meal. “I’ll absent myself from Prime, what does it matter if I incur penance?”
“You will not,” Brother Cadfael whispered back firmly. “You’ll wait until after dinner, when you are freed to your own work, as this will truly be legitimate work for you, the best you could be about. I will not have you flout any part of the rule.”
“As you would not dream of doing, of course!” breathed Mark, and his plain, diffident face brightened beautifully into a grin he might have borrowed from Edwin or Edwy.
“For no reason but matter of life and death. And owning my fault! And you are not me, and should not be copying my sins. It will be all the same, after dinner or before,” he said reassuringly. “You’ll ask for Hugh Beringar—no one else, mind, I would not be sure of any other as I am of him. Take him and show him where you found the vial, and I think Edwin’s family will soon be able to call him home again.”
Their planning was largely vain. The next morning’s chapter undid such arrangements as they had made, and changed everything.
*
Brother Richard the sub-prior rose, before the minor matters of business were dealt with, to say that he had an item of some urgency, for which he begged the prior’s attention.
“Brother Cellarer has received a messenger from our sheepfold near Rhydycroesau, by Oswestry. Lay Brother Barnabas is fallen ill with a bad chest, and is in fever, and Brother Simon is left to take care of all the flock there alone. But more than this, he is doubtful of his skill to tend the sick brother successfully, and asks, if it’s possible, that someone of more knowledge should come to help him for a while.”
“I have always thought,” said Prior Robert, frowning, “that we should have more than two men there. We run two hundred sheep on those hills, and it is a remote place. But how did Brother Simon manage to send word, since he is the only able man left there?”
“Why, he took advantage of the fortunate circumstances that our steward is now in charge at the manor of Mallilie. It seems it is only a few miles from Rhydycroesau. Brother Simon rode there and asked that word be sent, and a groom was despatched at once. No time has been lost, if we can send a helper today.”
The mention of Mallilie had caused the prior to prick up his ears. It had also made Cadfael start out of his own preoccupations, since this so clearly had a bearing on the very problems he was pondering. So Mallilie was but a few short miles from the abbey sheepfolds near Oswestry! He had never stopped to consider that the exact location of the manor might have any significance, and this abrupt enlightenment started a number of mental hares out of their forms in bewildering flight.
“Clearly we must do so,” said Robert, and almost visibly reminded himself that the errand could with propriety be laid upon the abbey’s most skilled herbalist and apothecary, which would effectively remove him not only from all contact with the Widow Bonel, but also from his meddlesome insistence on probing the unfortunate events which had made her a widow. The prior turned his silver, stately head and looked directly at Brother Cadfael, something he normally preferred not to do. The same considerations had dawned upon Cadfael, with the same pleasing effect. If I had devised this myself, he was thinking, it could not have been more apposite. Now young Mark can leave the errand to me, and remain here blameless.
“Brother Cadfael, it would seem this is a duty for you, who are accomplished in medicines. Can you at once put together all such preparations as may be needed for our sick brother?”
“I can and will, Father,” said Cadfael, so heartily that for a moment Prior Robert recoiled into doubt of his own wisdom and penetration. Why should the man be so happy at the prospect of a long winter ride, and hard work being both doctor and shepherd at the end of it? When he had been so assiduously poking his nose into the affairs of the Bonel household here? But the distance remained a guarantee; from Rhydycroesau he would be in no position to meddle further.
“I trust it may not be for very long. We shall say prayers for Brother Barnabas, that he may rally and thrive. You can again send word by the grooms at Mallilie, should there be need. And is your novice Mark well grounded, enough for minor ailments in your absence? In cases of serious illness we may call on the physician.”
“Brother Mark is devoted and able,” said Cadfael, with almost paternal pride, “and can be trusted absolutely, for if he feels himself in need of better counsel he will say so with modesty. And he has a good supply of all those remedies that may most be needed at this season. We have taken pains to provide against an ill winter.”
“That’s very well. Then in view of the need, you may leave chapter and make ready. Take a good mule from the stables, and have food with you for the way, and make sure you’re well provided for such an illness as Brother Barnabas seems to have contracted. If there is any case in the infirmary you feel you should visit before leaving, do so. Brother Mark shall be sent to you, you may have advice for him before you go.”
Brother Cadfael went out from the chapter-house and left them to their routine affairs. God is still looking our way, he thought, bustling blithely into his workshop and raking the shelves for all that he needed. Medicines for throat, chest, head, an unguent for rubbing into the chest, goose-grease and strong herbs. The rest was warmth and care and proper food. They had hens at Rhydycroesau, and their own good milch cow, fed through the winter. And last, a thing he need take only into Shrewsbury, the little green glass vial, still wrapped in its napkin.
Brother Mark came with a rush and out of breath, sent from his Latin studies under Brother Paul. “They say you’re going away, and I’m to be custodian here. Oh, Cadfael, how shall I manage without you? And what of Hugh Beringar, and this proof we have for him?”
“Leave that to me now,” said Cadfael. “To go to Rhydycroesau one must go through the town, I’ll bear it to the castle myself. You pay attention only to what you’ve learned from me, for I know how well it’s been learned, and I shall be here with you in spirit every moment. Imagine that you ask me, and you’ll find the answer.” He had a jar of unguent in one hand, he reached the other with absent affection and patted the young, smooth tonsure ringed by rough, thick, spiky straw-coloured hair. “It’s only for a short while, we’ll have Brother Barnabas on his feet in no time. And listen, child dear, the manor of Mallilie, I find, is but a short way from where I shall be, and it seems to me that the answer to what we need to know may be there, and not here.”
“Do you think so?” said Brother Mark hopefully, forgetting his own anxieties.
“I do, and I have a thought—no more than the gleam of an idea, that they loosed in me at chapter... Now make yourself useful! Go and bespeak me a good mule at the stables, and see all these things into the saddlebags for me. I have an errand to the infirmary before I leave.”
*
Brother Rhys was in his privileged place by the fire, hunched in his chair in a contented half-doze, but awake enough to open one eye pretty sharply at every movement and word around him. He was in the mood to welcome a visitor, and brightened into something approaching animation when Cadfael told him that he was bound for the north-west of the county, to the sheepfolds of Rhydycroesau.
“Your own countryside, brother! Shall I carry your greetings to the borderland? You’ll still have kinsfolk there, surely, three generations of them.”
“I have so!” Brother Rhys bared toothless gums in a dreamy smile. “If you should happen to meet with my cousin Cynfrith ap Rhys, or his brother Owain, give them my blessings. Ay, there’s a mort of my people in those parts. Ask after my niece Angharad, my Sister Marared’s girl—my youngest sister, that is, the one who married Ifor ap Morgan. I doubt Ifor’s dead before this, but if you should hear of him living, say I remember, and give him my good word. The girl ought to come and visit me, now her lad’s working here in the town. I remember her as a little lass no higher than a daisy, and that pretty...”
“Angharad was the girl who went as maidservant in the house of Bonel of Mallilie?” said Cadfael, gently prompting.
“She did, a pity it was! But they’ve been there many years now, the Saxons. You get used to foreigner families, in time. They never got further, though. Mallilie’s nothing but a thorn stuck in the side of Cynllaith. Stuck far in—nigh broken off, as some day it may be yet! It touches Saxon land barely at all, only by a claw...”
“Is that truth!” said Cadfael. “Then properly speaking Mallilie, for all it was held by an Englishman, and has been three generations now, is rightly within Wales?”
“As Welsh as Snowdon,” said Brother Rhys, harking back to catch once again a spark of his old patriotic fire. “And all the neighbours Welsh, and most of the tenants. I was born just to the west of it, nearby the church of Llansilin, which is the centre of the commote of Cynllaith. Welsh land from the beginning of the world!”
Welsh land! That could not be changed, merely because a Bonel in William Rufus’s reign had pushed his way in and got a hold on some acres of it, and maintained his grasp under the patronage of the earl of Chester ever since. Why did I never think, wondered Cadfael, to enquire earlier where this troublous manor lay?
“And Cynllaith has properly appointed Welsh judges? Competent to deal according to the code of Hywel Dda, not of Norman England?”
“Surely it has! A sound commote court as there is in Wales! The Bonels in their time have pleaded boundary cases, and suchlike, by whichever law best suited their own purposes, Welsh or English, what matter, provided it brought them gain? But the people like their Welsh code best, and the witness of neighbours, the proper way to settle a dispute. The just way!” said Brother Rhys righteously, and wagged his old head at Cadfael. “What’s all this of law, brother? Are you thinking of bringing suit yourself?” And he fell into a moist, pink-gummed giggling at the thought.
“Not I,” said Cadfael, rising, “but I fancy one that I know of may be thinking of it.”
He went out very thoughtfully, and in the great court the low winter sun came out suddenly and flashed in his eyes, dazzling him for the second time. Paradoxically, in this momentary blindness he could see his way clearly at last.